Where to Breathe Delhi’s Cleanest Air

India’s capital is a ring of smog, smoke and smells. But now there’s a sanctuary from pollution right in the city’s center, Connaught Place.

Next to New Delhi’s heaving Palika Bazaar stands an outdoor air filtration unit designed by the Italian firm Systemlife. This seven-ton hunk of metal has been sucking the pollutants from Delhi’s smog-choked air for the past three-and-a-half months.

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A fan vacuums air through a five-level carbon and electromagnetic filtration system, cutting out the toxins and even deodorizing Delhi’s infamous putrid city smell before it’s released again.

“If I personally want to go to the place with the cleanest air in Delhi now, it would probably be right here,” says Rodella Bruno, director of Systemlife India, pointing to where the purified air tumbles out.

In the machine’s first month in operation, Systemlife says that the purifier rid Delhi air of 2.5 kilograms of particulate matter — including carbon monoxide, nitrogen, lead and radioactive uranium.

Though Systemlife does not have the mechanism to measure the total amount of uranium it filtered, company representatives found the fact that there was any uranium alarming.

“This should be an eye opener,” says Dhruv Chanana, a director at Systemlife India. “Regular air should not contain uranium. That should only be found near nuclear reactors, not in a place like Central Delhi.”

In Europe, the pollution level measured by the Systemlife units averaged about 50 micrograms of dirty particles per hour, according to Mr. Bruno. In this New Delhi unit, Systemlife has clocked a peak of 1,500 micrograms of dirty particles an hour, Mr. Bruno says. That’s a level of pollution 3,000% higher than in Europe.

New Delhi is rated the fourth most-polluted city in the world, according to the World Health Organization. In a city that’s buzzing with roughly one million vehicles a day and where waste burning is a daily ritual, pollution levels are reportedly on the rise.

The Delhi government is scrambling to implement citywide pollution reduction strategies before New Delhi hosts the Commonwealth Games in October.

So why not position these supersized air-purifiers in every Indian chowk? Not so fast.

Systemlife says the unit purifies 360,000 cubic meters of air each day. That’s enough air to support 18,000 Delhi residents for one day. The company claims the unit is effective in cleaning air within a radius of half a kilometer.

But critics argue there is no data available as yet to determine whether the device will make a worthwhile dent in central Delhi’s overall pollution levels. Having loads of the machines could be necessary for them to have a real impact, even in Connaught Place.

“One machine is not good enough. We really need about seven to effectively clean the air in Connaught Place,” says Mr. Chanana.

But attempts to scale up could be too costly for the city to absorb. Although the company installed the Connaught Place unit free of cost, Mr. Chanana says each machine sells for as much as $300,000 with a minimum $2,000 a year in operational costs.

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